Stocks finished almost flat Wednesday after see-saw movement throughout the session as investors booked some profits with cautious positioning.
Market analysts said the market ended flat as a section of investor bagged profit while some others were busy rebalancing portfolio ahead of earnings and dividend declarations of financial sectors.
The investors from both sides of the trading fence were active throughout the trading session amid current volatile market sisuation, said a leading broker.
The market moved significantly between red and green as the days wore on with intra-day volatility was more than 25 points.
After witnessing volatility, DSEX, the prime index of the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), settled at 5,686, losing 1.10 points or 0.01 per cent over the previous day.
"Investors' cautious stance pulled down the index to the red zone as selling pressure on the sector specific shares from the engineering, power, telecom and pharma sectors prevailed," commented EBL Securities.
The two other indices also slipped into the red. The DS30 index, comprising blue chips, fell 2.77 points to finish at 1,993 and the DSE Shariah Index lost 0.51 point to close at 1,303.
Trading activities remained almost same over the last session as total turnover stood at Tk 5.68 billion, which was 1.21 per cent lower than the previous session's turnover of Tk 5.75 billion.
The heavyweight banking sector dominated the turnover chart, grabbing 18 per cent of the day's total turnover, followed by engineering with 17 per cent and textile 13 per cent.
According to International Leasing Securities the market faced slight correction as the risk-averse investors liquidated their holdings amid ongoing bearish trend of the market.
Most sectors, including engineering, power, telecommunication pharmaceuticals and financial institutions ended lower while heavyweight banking and food & allied posted modest gain.
The engineering sector witnessed the highest correction of 0.54 per cent, followed by power with 0.39 per cent, telecommunication 0.34 per cent, pharmaceuticals 0.28 per cent and financial institutions 0.18 per cent.
The banking sector posted the highest gain of 0.85 per cent, followed by food & allied with 0.64 per cent.
However, the port city bourse, Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE) finished marginally higher with its CSE All Share Price Index - CASPI - advancing 19 points to settle at 17,422 and the Selective Categories Index - CSCX - gaining 10 points to finish at 10,553.
Here too, the losers beat the gainers as 118 issues closed lower, 93 ended higher and 35 remained unchanged.
The port city bourse traded 6.60 million shares and mutual fund units worth more than Tk 195 million in turnover.
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